Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

When Will Bush Face The Grim Reality In Iraq?

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Three bombs exploded at a neighborhood celebration Thursday in western Baghdad, killing 35 children and seven adults, officials said. Hours earlier, a suicide car bomb killed a U.S. soldier and two Iraqis on the capital’s outskirts.

The bombs in Baghdad’s al-Amel neighborhood caused the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the conflict in Iraq (news – web sites) began 17 months ago. The children, who were still on school vacation, said they had been drawn to the scene by American soldiers handing out candy.

[…]

“The Americans called us, they told us, ‘Come here, come here,’ asking us if we wanted sweets. We went beside them, then a car exploded,” said 12-year-old Abdel Rahman Dawoud, lying naked in a hospital bed with shrapnel embedded all over his body.

The day of violence, including insurgent attacks and U.S. airstrikes in Fallujah, left a total of 46 people dead and 208 wounded

[…]

Also Thursday, the Arab news network Al-Jazeera showed video of 10 new hostages seized in Iraq by militants. Al-Jazeera said the 10 — six Iraqis, two Lebanese and two Indonesian women — were taken by The Islamic Army in Iraq. The group has claimed responsibility for seizing two French journalists last month.

[…]

Hours earlier, a suicide car bomber struck in the Abu Ghraib area outside of Baghdad, killing the American soldier and at least two Iraqis, and wounding 60, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.

That bomb targeted a compound housing the mayor’s office, a police station and other buildings, police 1st Lt. Ahmed Jawad said. A U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle parked in front of the compound was hit, Hutton said.

“I saw people flying in the air and falling on the ground,” said Saad Mohsin, who was in front of the mayor’s office and was struck by shrapnel.

[…]

American jets, tanks and artillery units repeatedly have targeted al-Zarqawi’s network in Fallujah in recent weeks as U.S.-led forces seek to assert control over insurgent enclaves ahead of elections slated for January. The military says the attacks have inflicted significant damage on the network, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.

Doctors say scores of civilians have been killed and wounded in the strikes.

Jesus H. Christ.

Are the American people going to fall for the same old tired tropes tonight about freedom and democracy and being resolute or are they going to demand to know why our president has us stuck in a living goddamned nightmare from which we cannot awake in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

If you want more of this, America, vote for George W. Bush. He’ll stay the goddamned course come hell or high water:

“Bush lied, my son died”

In a TV commercial released Wednesday, Cindy Sheehan, a 47-year-old woman from Vacaville, Calif., whose 24-year-old son was killed in Sadr City in April, speaks directly to George W. Bush.

Shot in black-and-white, her soft voice cracking, she says, “I imagined it would hurt if one of my kids was killed, but I never thought it would hurt this bad, especially someone so honest and brave as Casey, my son. When you haven’t been honest with us, when you and your advisors rushed us into this war. How do you think we felt when we heard the Senate report that said there was no link between Iraq and 9/11?”

This is one of four new ads featuring relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq, produced by a new political action committee called RealVoices.org. At a time when soldiers’ parents have been arrested at Bush rallies and thrown out of the Republican National Convention for trying to make themselves heard, Real Voices was formed to broadcast the excruciating messages of those who feel that their loved ones’ lives were wasted in Iraq.

Real Voices is spending $200,000 on its initial ad buy while trying to raise more money. Each one of the spots is bitter and searing. In one, Raphael Zappala, whose 30-year-old brother was killed in Baghdad while searching a warehouse for weapons of mass destruction, says, “My brother died trying to make an honest man out of George W. Bush, needlessly. He was betrayed by the lies of his commander in chief. And the troops still in Iraq are being betrayed.” Another features a California mother named Jane Bright, who remains livid about Bush’s rash “Bring ’em on!” challenge. “Mr. Bush,” she says, “I have no way of knowing whether the insurgent who killed my son ever heard your foolish taunt. But thanks to you, Mr. President, I have the rest of my life to wonder about it.”

[…]

One might think that Sheehan’s sacrifice would protect her from assaults by the right-wing patriotism police, but one would be wrong. Since she started speaking out, she’s been attacked as a political opportunist and accused of treason.

“I have had people tell me that what I’m doing is supporting terrorists and that my son would be ashamed of me,” she says. “I was on a radio call-in show on Sunday morning, and I had a lot of people call me a traitor.”

This group is raising money to run these ads in swing states. If you have any left to spare, this is a good place to put it.

Real Voices

Brat Boy Debater

In case anyone’s wondering why Bush and company negotiated hard for the networks not to show cut-away or reaction shots in the debate, this little passage from “When George meets John” by James Fallows explains it:

The debate was held in a tiny basement room on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. The candidates’ families and a few local officials sat on metal folding chairs in the room; everyone else, including reporters, watched TV monitors elsewhere. Laura Bush sat a few feet away from Mauro’s children, whom she knew but (according to Mauro) did not speak to or acknowledge. According to the rules of this debate, insisted on by Bush’s team, the screen had to show only whichever candidate was speaking—that is, no cutaway or reaction shots were allowed

Therefore no one outside the room saw the miniature drama inside. Bush was halfway toward his presidential style, speaking more slowly and less gracefully than four years earlier, and with a more dismissive air toward his opponent. While Mauro was speaking, Bush would sigh, grimace, and send body-language messages of boredom or contempt. “It was incredible,” Mauro told me recently. “I almost can’t believe it in retelling it. Because the press was upstairs, they didn’t realize how aggressive he was on the stage—pulling the sleeve of the moderator, staring or winking at Laura in the crowd.” The moderator of the debate, Bob Moore, of the El Paso Times, told me that Bush actually grabbed him just before the debate: “In the hallway, Bush did grab me by the lapels, pull me close to his face, and say, ‘Bobby, you clean up real good.’ Typical Bush.” When Bush was on stage but off camera, Moore said, “there was that Bush smirk, rolling his eyes, all of which Bush is very good at.“

Now, supposedly the networks are not going to follow the negotiated restrictions:

And the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which is not a party to the agreement, said it could not be expected to enforce strictures on network coverage of the four debates.

At issue are rules that bar the networks from airing “cutaway” shots of either Republican President Bush or Democratic challenger John Kerry while they are waiting their turn to speak during the debates.

[…]

Fox News Channel, whose turn it is under a rotation system to operate the “pool” cameras for all the networks in the first debate on Thursday in Coral Gables, Florida, said it would follow its own editorial judgment in operating its cameras.

“They don’t want reaction shots,” said Fox News spokesman Paul Schur told Reuters. “We’re not going to bow to outside pressure. We’re not going to follow these restrictions.”

Yeah, sure.

This is a problem. FoxNews has a very bad track record of signalling GOP propaganda in debates. In the January 22 Democratic primary debate, they cut to their panel for immediate spinning by William Bennett before the debate was over.

Fox News is going to follow it’s own editorial rules all right. And, I think we know what they are, don’t we?

Dick’s Big Flop.

Most of you have undoubtedly seen this Campaign Extra post featuring an interview with Dick Cheney in 1992 via Atrios, but it’s worth thinking about a little bit.

Here’s what he said back then:

We stopped when we did, and it was a unanimous recommendation on the part of the President’s advisors, civilian and military, we stopped when we did because we had achieved our objectives. We had said from the outset that our purpose was to liberate Kuwait and destroy Saddam Hussein’s capacity to threaten his neighbors, his offensive military capability, we did that. We destroyed about two-thirds of his army in that portion that he sent in to Kuwait and Iraq, and stripped him of most of his weapons of mass destruction.

We could have gone on. There is no doubt in my mind, from a military standpoint we could have sent forces on down the road to Baghdad, captured Baghdad, but I would expect in terms of trying to get rid of Saddam Hussein that it would not have been an easy task. I don’t think it was the kind of situation where we could have pulled up with a paddywagon in front of the Presidential Palace and said, “Come on Saddam, you’re going to the slammer.” I think we would have had to run him to ground, and doing that in Baghdad or in a nation as large as Iraq would have involved a lot of US forces.

Once we rounded up Saddam, then the question is what do you do? You’re going to put a government in his place. Presumably, you’re not just going to turn your back and walk away. You have to put some kind of a government in its place. And then the question comes is it going to be a Shi’a government or a Kurdish government, or maybe a Sunni government, or maybe it ought to be based on the old Baathist Party regime, or some combination thereof.

How long is that government to be able to stay in power without US military support to keep it there? How long can we maintain the coalition?

Remember we entered into this activity with the support of 30 other nations. A very important part of that support was the support of other Arab nations who took up arms against a brother Arab state, who allowed us to operate military forces from their territory, who sent combat forces to fight alongside our people in Kuwait.

How long could we have maintained that coalition of Arab states if we had been involved in the long-range occupation by the US in Iraq? I would guess if we had gone on to Baghdad I would still have forces in Iraq today. I don’t know how we would have let go of that tar baby once we had grabbed hold of it.

A final point that I think is very important. Everybody is fond of looking back at Desert Storm and saying that it was, in fact, a low cost conflict because we didn’t suffer very many casualties. But for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it was not a cheap or a low cost conflict. The question, to my mind, in terms of this notion that we should have gone on and occupied Iraq is how many additional American casualties would we have had to suffer? How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer I would give is not very damn many.

Not very damn many…

Now, the harpies will screech at the top of their lungs, “But, 9/11 changed everything OHMYGODTHEYARETRYINGTOKILLUS!!!!!”

But, you know, it didn’t change the fact that Saddam had not reconstituted his WMD, that he had no ties to al Qaeda and that all we needed to do was to get weapons inspectors back into the country to harrass him and keep him in line. An invasion and occupation simply wasn’t necessary for our safety or the safety of those in the region.

Junior will wax on about liberating the Iraqi people and freeeeedom and demaaahcracy and loving yer neighbor like you just love to love yerself. But, if that’s why we did it — because we’re so good — then Unka Dick sure has some splaining to do. How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer I would give is not very damn many. Yup.

It’s funny to me how differently I see the events of 9/11 changing “everything” than these people do. To me, it meant that we could not go gallivanting around the world “liberating” people if it meant that we would exacerbate the terrorist threat without any tangible benefit in security. Until this period of radicalism is brought under control or ends through other means, wars of liberation in the mid-east and the Indian subcontinent anyway, are just too dangerous. 9/11 turned me, a dyed in the wool liberal, from something of a Wilsonian internationalist into much more of a realist.

And, as I have written about many times before, we are much less safe today that we were before we let the entire world know that our vaunted intelligence services couldn’t find a weapon of mass destruction if it fell out of the sky and landed on the White House lawn. And now we’ve also let everybody know that we have a thinly stretched part-time military and a government that can’t get it together enough to plan an occupation properly.

A little mystery about the super powers of a super power is a very powerful thing. We are now looking pretty damned weak compared to what the world thought of us in January of 2002.

Weirdly, I think that Dick Cheney, of all people, would have agreed with me back in 1992. Sometime between then and now he drank the neocon fire water and it packs a punch. What did Lady MacMyleroie put in that stuff, anyway?

Good News

Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

What is good about that, you ask?

military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody attacks during the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single battle.

“We have had zero tactical losses; we have lost no battles,” said one senior American military officer. “The insurgency has had zero tactical victories.

See, the ragtag insurgency in Iraq has not “won” a “battle” against the mightiest military the world has ever known so they aren’t accomplishing anything.

In other news, death by a thousand cuts was declared illegal by the Ashcroft torture division of the Justice Department.

Dancing For Democracy

MSNBC just had a professor from Syracuse University on telling us that body language and gestures are what matter to voters in debates and it occurred to me that it is a mistake for Bush to agree to debates at all. He should insist that the candidates instead do an interpretive dance for the citizens and let them decide strictly on the basis of physical expression.

Karl Rove always says that politics is TV with the sound turned off and Preznit Gibberish has proved it time and again. He wears costumes and mimes being a flyboy, a cowboy and a good ole boy so well that he’s downright french about it. As a presidential interpretive dancer, Dubya’s the best there’s ever been. He’d be unbeatable if he never had to open his mouth.

Fortune Telling

Atrios has a good post up about the polls and mentions that Matt Yglesias takes Texeira and others to task for focusing on the Gallup poll’s obvious bias. Matt says:

The reality is that after a few days of what looked to me like a comeback, the Kerry campaign has once again lost its momentum.

You know, I hate to bring this up, but perhaps it’s time to issue a reminder here about political prognostication and instincts. It seems like it was only a few months ago — and, by gosh it was — that we heard this:

Do note that, much as Dean’s nomination is inevitable, it is also inevitable that at some point in the not-too-distant future, his nomination will cease to look inevitable. Nevertheless, it will still be inevitable as has been clear for some time. When you combine the most impassioned supporters with what’s obviously the best-run campaign, and the most money, you’re looking at a winner.

As you can see, prognostication is a dangerous game.

The reality is that this race is close. It is NOT clear that Kerry has lost momentum. It is simply unknowable from the polls who has momentum, if anyone, and whether Kerry is ahead by a few points or behind by a few points — because the race is close. These divergent polls are likely the result of the impact of technology on polling methods finally coming to fruition, a shifting undecided electorate as they finally tune in heavily and some very bad polling methods that don’t matter a lot when the race is a blowout. We simply don’t know anything more than that the race is within spitting distance for both candidates at this point.

As for political instincts, one of the purposes of calling the damn polls into question is to try to work the refs a little bit. The polls are all over the place and some of it is obviously due to this ridiculous sampling of extra Republican.

Just now Blitzer had Frank Newport on and, needless to say, Blitzer stood up for Gallup and even said he would “vouch” for the poll. But by even airing this controversy it shakes at least some people’s faith in the poll and puts Gallup on the defensive. That’s how the game is played, folks.

Swimming In The Tank

Media Matters has a run down on debate expectations and clearly, the media have high expectations of George W. Bush in this debate. Across the board they are assuming that he will win with his two-faced, phony folksy ways. After all, they are the ones who decide such things. So, don’t get your hopes up for John Kerry to “win” this debate even if he wins it. The press is in the tank.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that undecideds may be looking for more substance this year than robotic, on-message non-sequitors and they might just find the president’s slouchy, casual style a little bit disconcerting in a time of serious challenges. It’s easy for him to appear in charge and in control when he’s all by himself on a stage. But, when you see him next to someone who has command of the issues and looks straight in the camera and challenges his unresponsive bumper sticker mantras, they may just be surprised. Anything’s possible.

By the way, has anybody noticed that Bush is sounding a little bit spacey on the stump these last couple of days? Maybe he hasn’t been getting enough sleep or enough coffee. His eyes are very puffy. I don’t know what it is, but he doesn’t seem to be himself. Wierd.

Meow

Kitty’s Number One

Here’s a fun little tid-bit from page 492, just to whet your appetite:

Barbara Bush was more determined than ever to see her daughter re-marry. She believed that only through marriage could Doro and her children find their safest haven. To that end Barbara encouraged Doro to date.

“We spent a weekend up at Camp David with the Bushes….They had two dogs up there at the time and the divorced daughter,” recalled one congressional wife. “Barbara told me she was concerned because Doro had dated Representative David Dreier for a year and he never touched her… ‘Never laid a hand on her,’ said Barbara… I think Doro had better luck when she started dating a democrat.”

There’s more — much, much more.

Thanks to Sekmet and Pandora on BCF

Pink Slip

Taking Bob Novak at face value (always a dicey proposition) I think we have to conclude that our vaunted resolute, CEO president doesn’t listen to anyone and can’t manage his way out of a bag of pork rinds.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.)

For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is without precedent. For the agency to go semi-public is not only unprecedented but shocking. George Tenet’s retirement as director of Central Intelligence removed the buffer between president and agency. As the new DCI, Porter Goss inherits an extraordinarily sensitive situation.

What a good idea it is to re-elect a president who is at war with his own State department and CIA in the middle of a national security crisis. This alleged great leader makes enemies of practically everyone he comes in contact with, particularly those who have expertise and knowledge he desperately needs. Harvard Business School must teach some odd management techniques.

For a man who coasted on his daddy’s name until he was fifty four, antagonizing all of America’s allies and half the US government is quite an achievement in just three short years. His family must be so proud. Four More Years!